consider he was raised by a woman who said things like “suffering is noble,” and “a woman who works is a stain on her menfolk’s honor,” it’s easy to think it’s not his fault because it’s all he knows.
I’ve never excused him. Because I was milked at the same teat, reared on the same ideology, and I’ve rejected it—body and soul. My mother may have been a terrible parent, but I learned a lot watching her and my father’s marriage fall apart.
But the biggest lesson she taught me was that if I followed in her footsteps, all I’d ever have were the things he wanted me to have. That was problematic because the only time my father seemed to notice me was when I did something that displeased him. So, all he ever gave me was razed earth, emotional violence, and the motivation to fly under his radar.
I did everything he expected, at least on the surface. But on my fifteenth birthday, I begged Bethany to drive to an art supply store two towns over so I could apply for a job. I got the job, and I made the drive three times a week for a year until my father found out and all hell broke loose.
The art store owner got audited by the IRS and was found to be in serious arrears. She had to declare bankruptcy and close her business. She’s a cashier at a Wilde Eats grocery store in Houston. He ran her out of town like he does to everyone who crosses him. Everyone except me, apparently. My phone rings, and my stomach doesn't tighten the way it has for months. I’ve heard from all the companies I applied to already, so at least it’s not another rejection.
I slide my apathetic gaze over to it and scramble to pick it up when I see Aunt Jude’s name flashes on the screen. She and Richard moved back to France permanently after my father evicted them from the lake house. She rarely calls and I have these pangs of guilt because what he did to them was my fault. I was driving to see her at the lake house when I had my accident. My father blamed her for giving me safe haven in the lake house and threw her out. He bought the house for my mother, but Jude lived there 9 months out of the year for twenty years even after she left, and we all considered it hers.
He rented it out after my accident, and I haven’t been back there since.
I pick up the phone. “Hello stranger,”
“Do you have a job or a husband yet?” Her raspy voice has a French accent, muddled and stretched after three decades of living in Southeast Texas.
Normally, I find her irreverent and straight to the point manner of starting conversations endearing and refreshing. But at 5 pm on the Friday of a week that has felt like it would never end, it’s the worst question she could ask.
I press the speakerphone button on my phone and lay it down. “No. I don’t have either and I’m so damn tired, I just don't care.” I cross my arms on the desk, drop my head onto them and close my eyes.
“Are you going let that sorry ass man beat you?”
“He beat everyone else. Why should I be any different?”
“Pathetic is not your color, Elisabeth.”
“You’re not helping,” I groan.
“I taught you to help yourself, child. Sit up, right now. Fight your corner, darling,”
Her command, spoken without raising her voice, has the effect of dunking my head in a bucket of ice water.
As the oldest of five children, with a mother who was chronically ill and a father who drank the way most of us breathed, she managed to raise herself and all of them out of poverty with the sheer force of her determination. She fights for the people she loves and I’m so lucky to be one of them. I don't know what I would have done without her after my mother left. “I’m up and I’m listening.” I say with as much energy as I can muster.
“Good. Now, you’ve been in tighter, darker, more treacherous corners. Right? Tell me what you’re fighting for.”
“Better than I’ve been offered,” I answer, by rote.
“You keep saying that. But what does it mean?”
I frown, at the blank my mind draws. I've been saying it so long, I don’t even think about that anymore. “Well, I’ve been trying to find a job so I